Last week’s remarks by the president of the European Commission backfired. Ursula von der Leyen suggested that if Italy voted conservative, it would be treated with the same injustice Brussels now directs toward Poland and Hungary. It turns out the words were so incendiary that they may have actually encouraged support for Giorga Meloni. Learning no lessons from the exchange, high-ranking German and Austrian EU politicians continued on Sunday to tell Italians how to run their own country.
The social-democratic vice president of the European Parliament, Katharina Barley (SPD), called the result of the election “worrying” and insinuated it could be “a danger to constructive cooperation in Europe.” “Giorgia Meloni will be a prime minister whose political role models will be Viktor Orbán and Donald Trump,” she said in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt. The German politician accused Meloni of paying
lip service to Europe during the election campaign … With her, the autocrats are getting a lobbyist in the European Council to throw sand into the EU’s gears.
The Green politician Thomas Waitz (Austria) was even more radical in his criticism. For him, Meloni’s tendency towards “national solo efforts” could “turn into a catastrophe for Europe.” Waitz called upon conservatives in Italy to reject a coalition.
Even after the right-wing victory at the elections in Italy, the common goals have to remain the center of our attention. We need a pro-European government in Italy, and that certainly can’t be a government under the post-Fascist Meloni. I call on Berlusconi, whose party is a member of the European People’s Party, not to support this government.
For those beyond the Brussels bubble, the shift in Italy marks a high point of renewed hope towards European reform among conservative forces. In an exclusive statement to the European Conservative, Romanian member of the European Parliament Cristian Terhes said:
The Italian people have spoken in a democratic election and the Brussel’s unelected bureacrats must listen! The Conservative success in Italy comes after the one in Sweden and more will come. And we need it in order to save Europe.
Momentum is growing for a better Europe where national democracy, family, and our spiritual roots in the Christian faith are respected. I congratulate Fratelli d’Italia in their election success and wish them all the best for the future in serving their nation.
Other voices, as summed up in our post-election report by Robert Semonsen, include president of the Irish Freedom Party Hermann Kelly, who noted that Italy had replaced an “EU-placed technocrat,” and Peter Bystron, foreign policy spokesman for the German AfD, who called Meloni’s victory a win for “the people and political parties working for the Italian people.”
In a first analysis of the Italian election, by the European Conservative’s editor-in-chief Alvino-Mario Fantini and editorial board member and contributor Francesco Giubilei, the latter concluded that while the election result is a huge gain for Italy, it remains to be seen what effect it will have on EU institutions. “If during the next European elections [in two years], the majority changes to a more conservative composition, there is hope.”
Giubilei concluded, “This European Union has failed in all the important challenges of our times. We really need a different European Union.”
